Week 11 - The Last of Term 1

Looking back on this term I'm amazed at all we have accomplished. From the first few weeks when everyone was so quiet .... to  the now and the not so quiet!! Room 11 has come together as a class and new friendships have grown and old ones have been strengthened. There have been some really great learning experiences - both in and out of the classroom.

 Today I've been enjoying handing out little easter eggs. It was a great exercise getting Room 11 students to nominate each other for good moments.

This was full this morning!

Today has been a "finishing off" kind of day - camp recounts, inquiry tasks and reading activities!

New Zealand "Treasures" for a collage

The Battle of the Mountains - Christina's Art

Tom H, Typing up his "interview" with mountain biker Brook MacDonald

Also this week we have been joining with Room 9 for our PE sessions? Yesterday we played Long Ball and today it was Unihoc in the Hall.

This was our week :)

Well we've coped with a wet week! 

The week started with our visit to Matahiwi Marae. The rain managed to stay away as we walked onto the Marae but we had to move into the whare kai for most of the powhiri.
The students had three activities there: Learning about the Marae Atea and Maui, hearing about the ancestors associated with Matahiwi and looking at the Jacob Scott mural inside the whare kai.

Tuesday saw us over at Havelock North High School. We attended the dress rehearsal of "The 39 Steps" and all enjoyed the acting and overall quality of the performance.

Wednesday and Thursday we have been enjoying visiting other classrooms for our Kotahitanga rotations. Both Miss Pitt and Miss Kay have said what a great group of kids Room 11 is!!

Mrs Bassett sent through the following collage of KK during Food Technology on Thursday.

So to today and it too has been a busy one, with the presentation of classroom banners and our Kapa Haka Assembly. Photos next week!  Here's to a sunny one :)

Mrs Goodwin's Showme learning!!

Kiwis with Miss Pitt

This afternoon Room 11 worked with Miss Pitt and created Kiwiana stamps.

The Week After Camp!

Raft building

Waimangu Valley: Echo Crater

This week has gone by in a blurr! It has certainly taken a few days to catch up on sleep after those action packed days at Lakes Ranch. Unfortunately I lost a camera so only have a few photos to share but here are a few:

More from Waimangu

The Water Slide

The Splash

The hot pools were used A LOT!! It was great for activities and for relaxing. At times it was hard to see water for children.

The abseiling was a challenge for many - me included. The setting was amazing and it was a real highlight for me to be able to watch the Room 11 students taking on the "wall"!

and yip... I had a go too!

On our return to HNI this week we have been busy creating our class banner for next week's Kotahitanga celebration! We successfully managed to put 32 handprints on without painting ourselves and each other. The proverb translates as "Many hands make light work" and backs up the term focus of unity.  

We also had a "go" at the Hongi - before our visit to Matahiwi Marae on Monday.

                                      

     

So that is a brief look back on the last couple of weeks in Room 11!

Week before CAMP!

It's really amazing to think that this time in a week we will be at Lakes Ranch! After this busy week it will probably feel like a holiday??!! I know that there are lots of students really looking forward to the challenge that EOTC week brings.
Several highlights for me this week, including homework tasks, athletics sports and introducing some students to some great news websites.
Homework: this week Tamar made a Pinata and we had a whole lot of fun with that.

 We also had crystals made, fitness plans developed, animals created and a range of people "built" for us.

 

   

 The HNI Athletics Day was on Tuesday and it was a full-on, hot day! I was SO impressed by the Room 11 students; their attitude and participation in the various events was wonderful.

And today, with students away at Softball, HBHS and choir, those of us remaining spent reading checking up on a range of news stories from around the world!

So that was a brief glimpse of Week 7. Look forward to lots of camp photos and stories in a couple of weeks :)

Room 11's Week 6!

This week Room 11 has been the school's duty class. This means that students have been managing the PE Shed at lunchtimes (Christina, Tamar, Flynn and Pip), being the school office "runner" (Maisie) and Henry and Liam have been helping out in the staff room with dishes ....

Reward for the hard work ..  eating the teachers' morning tea biscuits!

Also this week I have had enormous pleasure marking the "Musical" Learning Styles homework. We have shared videos of students playing, seen photos and drawings of a huge range of "home made" musical instruments - Bella's wrench xylophone looked amazing. I really appreciate the number of parents who shared some of their favourite music with their children (and vice versa of course!). Here's a piece of music composed by Alice. It also sounded fabulous! 

 

In the classroom we've been reading The Highwayman, by Alfred Noyes and I have seen some great story boards recording the key events, with suggestions for actors who could star and theme music that would be appropriate to create the correct atmosphere. With writing this week the students have been working on their character descriptions and one group used the chrome books for this task. I enjoyed learning how to check their work and comment about it along the way. Also starting this week was the extension maths class,so in Room 11 we left statistics and moved onto adding and subtracting!

This morning I have been  visited by various students filming for media studies ...

                                     

This week softball didn't "happen" but Long Jump did. The students set up the pit and then got on with the job of completing their jumps. I'll end with some of them in action.

Nina

Jacob - lots of height!

Bhulvhai

Week 5 in Room 11

Another week has gone by since the last posting. There is always so much going on that it is hard to know where to begin but...
Here's a peek at some homework I enjoyed marking this week:

Ellie's Homework

There are many others who are putting both the time and effort into these tasks and I enjoyed looking at the goals that many wanted to achieve.

Our Maths focus so far has been on Statistics. Mid way through the week we had a look back on all the things we felt we had either learnt or revisited and remembered more clearly. Here's a photo of some of the board:

Excuse the handwriting - lots of ideas coming from the class!

 It was so great that every student could add their ideas.
Students from the 2013 Maths extension class and a couple of others have been looking at the nzmaths website and have been doing their own independent investigations:

Room 11 students were involved in the HNI Triathlon on Wednesday. We had a boys' team of Tom R (swim leg), Jacob M (run leg) and Henry W (cycle leg) who went really well to achieve a third. Livy completed the swim leg for the girls' team - along with two others from Room 9 and they came second! After all that exercise you need refuelling ....

Tom and Jacob - recovery mode!

I asked the class to pose for a class photo this morning. There was a bit of complaining because it was right on the morning tea break. As you can see they weren't very enthusiastic!! Maybe next time they will smile a wee bit more.

 And to end this week in a really great way: Congratulations Eli on achieving your Honour's

Badge!!